Why did Stephen King really hate “The Shining” so much? Did “Doctor Sleep” make things even worse
or a little better? The answer might actually surprise you. Keep watching to find out!
Despite an incomparable career, Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack Torrance in "The Shining"
is arguably his most recognizable. In King's novel, Jack is introduced as a well-intentioned
and likable man, still struggling to overcome his history of alcoholism and a general dislike
for authority. Upon entering The Overlook Hotel, Jack quickly becomes overtaken by the
evil within its walls, possessing him and destroying everything inside his mind that
kept him human. In Kubrick's film, Torrance is presented as a sinister presence almost
immediately. Frederick Clarke of Cinefantastique Magazine in 1996 described the change, saying:
"Instead of playing a normal man who becomes insane,
Nicholson portrays a crazy man attempting to remain sane."
In the same vein, Stephen King said of Nicholson’s performance to Deadline:
"The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie ...absolutely no arc at all [...] When we
first see Jack Nicholson, he's in the office of Mr. Ullman, the manager of the hotel,
and you know, then, he's crazy as a [...] house rat. All he does is get crazier. In the book,
he's a guy who's struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me,
that's a tragedy. In the movie, there's no tragedy because there's no real change."
“Well, that is quite a story.”
From the moment King heard Kubrick was looking at Nicholson for the role, he disavowed the casting.
According to the book "Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond,"
King had suggested actors Michael Moriarty, Jon Voight, and Martin Sheen.
He felt one of these men would better represent the character he had written.
Kubrick was looking at Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, and Robin Williams.
Jack Torrance wasn't the only character to be overhauled by Kubrick,
Wendy Torrance's film adaptation was also dramatically changed. Kubrick's
version of Wendy Torrance portrays her as frail, emotionally weak, submissive, and vulnerable,
casting Shelley Duvall fresh off the heels of her roles in "Three Women" and "Annie Hall."
Unfortunately, Kubrick's decision to make Wendy Torrance appear weaker than King's character in
the book had a permanent impact on Duvall. Kubrick psychologically tormented her on set
to get the performance out of her he desired. The famous scene of Wendy backing away from
Jack on the stairs was shot a record number 127 takes, shredding Duvall's
hands raw from gripping a baseball bat and suffering from dehydration from crying.
“Don’t hurt me!”
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Stay away from me!”
King has been vocally critical of the change, saying of Duvall's characterization of Wendy:
"[It’s] one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film [...] She's
basically just there to scream and be stupid, and that's not the woman that I wrote about."
“You know that, don’t ya?”
“Yes, Dad.”
King has created some of the best female characters in horror history,
and it's a shame that the true character of Wendy Torrance has been lost in the eyes of
the general public. Even so, Duvall's character is the definitive version
from a pop culture standpoint, regardless of how King's book originally presented her.
In the TCM documentary "A Night At The Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King,"
King mentioned a phone call he had with Kubrick regarding ghost stories and the possibilities of
life after death. Kubrick told King that there's a fundamental sense of optimism with ghost stories,
because they imply an existence after death. King responded asking if he
found hell to be optimistic, and Kubrick stated that he doesn't believe in hell.
Right away, this is the basis for the disconnect between King and Kubrick's visions of horror.
King's view of good and evil is rooted in Biblical influences, while Kubrick
was a known pessimist. These differing views on what makes something good or evil is a direct
influence on their differing beliefs regarding Jack Torrance. King said a few years back:
"I think 'The Shining' is a beautiful film and it looks terrific and as I've said before,
it's like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it. In that sense, when it opened,
a lot of the reviews weren't very favorable, and I was one of those
reviewers ... I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn't care for it much."
King has definitely opened his mouth in the years since,
unafraid to express how he really feels. He added:
"The movie has no heart; there's no center to the picture. I wrote the book as a tragedy,
and if it was a tragedy, it was because all the people loved each other ... here,
it seems there's no tragedy because there's nothing to be lost."
36 years after King published "The Shining," he released the sequel novel, "Doctor Sleep."
Focused on a now adult Danny Torrance, played by Ewan McGregor, contemporary master of horror Mike
Flanagan was tasked with the impossible a few years later when directing the film adaptation.
Could he marry the undeniable iconography of Kubrick's "The Shining" with the artistic intent
of Stephen King? When Flanagan was chosen for the job, he was honest with King and told him:
"If you say 'Overlook Hotel,' I see something. It lives right up in my
brain because of Stanley Kubrick ... you can't pretend that isn't the case."
Admittedly reluctant, King was eventually won over by Flanagan's screenplay, going so far as to say:
"Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of 'The Shining' is redeemed for me here."
King saw the finished project for the first time in an empty theater with Flanagan,
who told him he did, quote, "a beautiful job" once the credits rolled. As Flanagan tells it,
in the conversations that followed, King told him that "Doctor Sleep" actually helped
warm his feelings toward Kubrick's version of "The Shining." King said,
"Mike took my material, he created a terrific story,
people who have seen this movie flip for it, and I flipped for it, too.
He managed to take my novel of 'Doctor Sleep,' the sequel, and somehow weld it seamlessly to
the Kubrick version of 'The Shining,' the movie. So, yeah, I liked it a lot."
Thanks to Mike Flanagan, the impossible was made possible, and the legendary strife between
Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick's ideas of "The Shining" was made a bit sweeter.
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